Mexico is a federal republic composed of 31 states and the Federal District. Governmental powers are divided constitutionally between executive, legislative, and judicial branches, but, when Mexico was under one-party rule in the 20th century, the president had strong control over the entire system. The constitution of 1917, which has been amended several times, guarantees personal freedoms and civil liberties and also establishes economic and political principles for the country.

The legislative branch is divided into an upper house, the Senate, and a lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. Senators serve six-year terms and deputies three-year terms; members of the legislature cannot be reelected for the immediately succeeding term. Three-fifths of the deputies are elected directly by popular vote, while the remainder are selected in proportion to the votes received by political parties in each of five large electoral regions.

Popularly elected and limited to one six-year term, the president is empowered to select a cabinet, the attorney general, diplomats, high-ranking military officers, and Supreme Court justices (who serve life terms). The president also has the right to issue reglamentos (executive decrees) that have the effect of law. Because there is no vice president, in the event of the death or incapacity of the president, the legislature designates a provisional successor. The executive branch has historically dominated the other two branches of government, although the Congress has gained a larger share of power since the late 20th century.

Local government

The federal constitution relegates several powers to the 31 states and the Federal District (Mexico City), including the ability to raise local taxes. Moreover, state constitutions follow the model of the federal constitution in providing for three independent branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial. Most states have a unicameral legislature called the Chamber of Deputies, whose members serve three-year terms. Governors are popularly elected to six-year terms and may not be reelected. Because of Mexico’s tradition of highly centralized government, state and local budgets are largely dependent on federally allocated funds. Under PRI rule, Mexican presidents influenced or decided many state and local matters, including elections. Although such centralized control is no longer generally accepted, Mexico’s principal political parties maintain locally dominant power bases in various states and cities.

At its most basic level, local government is administered by more than 2,000 units called municipios (“municipalities”), which may be entirely urban or consist of a town or central village as well as its hinterland. Members of municipio governments are typically elected for three-year terms.

Justice

The judicial system consists of several courts, including the Supreme Court of Justice , whose 11 members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Congress; the Electoral Tribunal, which is sworn to oversee elections; the Federal Judicial Council; and numerous circuit and district courts. Although Mexico has both federal and state courts, most serious cases are heard in federal courts by judges without the assistance of juries.

According to law, defendants have several rights to assure fair trials and humane treatment; in practice, however, the system is overburdened and riddled with problems. In spite of determined efforts by some authorities to fight theft, fraud, and violent crime, few Mexicans have strong confidence in the police or the judicial system, and therefore a large percentage of crimes go unreported. On the other hand, poor and indigenous defendants suffer an inordinate share of arbitrary arrests and detentions, and many are held for long periods prior to trials or sentencing. Mexico’s prisons, like most of those in Latin America, are generally overcrowded and notorious for unhealthful conditions, corruption, and abuses of various kinds. The vast majority of Mexican prisoners are held in hundreds of state and local facilities, although smaller numbers are in federal prisons.

Political process

Mexico’s political system revolves around a limited number of large political parties, while on its fringes are a group of smaller parties. The most powerful political party in the 20th century was the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional; PRI), which ran Mexico as an effective one-party state from 1929 until the late 20th century. During this period the PRI never lost a presidential election—though often there were allegations of vote rigging—and the vast majority of its gubernatorial candidates were similarly successful. Typically, the sitting president, as leader of the party, selected its next presidential candidate—thus effectively choosing a successor. Ernesto Zedillo, the president from 1994 to 2000, broke from that tradition in 1999, prompting the PRI to hold a primary election to choose a candidate; Zedillo also instituted other electoral reforms. As a result, in 2000 the PRI’s presidential candidate was defeated by Vicente Fox Quesada of the conservative National Action Party (Partido de Acción Popular; PAN), who led an opposition coalition, the “Alliance for Change,” to victory, marking the end of 71 years of continuous rule by the PRI. (The party had already lost control of the Chamber of Deputies in 1997.) The election, which was monitored by tens of thousands of Mexican and international observers, was considered to be the fairest and most democratic in Mexico’s troubled electoral history.

In subsequent elections PAN, the PRI, and the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática; PRD), which had also emerged as a major political party in the 1990s, continued to win a large number of congressional seats and to vie for control of the Federal District, several states, and the national government. Among the lesser parties are the Mexican Ecological Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista Mexicano; PVEM), the leftist Labour Party (Partido del Trabajo; PT), and the Democratic Convergence Party (PCD). Mexico also has several small communist parties.

A woman suffrage movement began in Mexico in the 1880s and gained momentum during the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). Women were first allowed to vote in the Yucatán in 1917. Elsewhere in Mexico, however, women could not vote in local elections or hold local office until 1947. A constitutional amendment in 1953 extended those rights to national elections and offices. By the early 21st century women occupied about one-fifth of the seats in the Senate and more than one-fourth in the Chamber of Deputies, as well as a small number of ministerial and Supreme Court positions. Many states require that no more than 70 to 80 percent of candidates be of one gender. Although all Mexican citizens age 18 and older are required by law to vote, enforcement is lax. Mexicans living outside the country, including millions in the United States, are now allowed to vote by absentee ballot.

Security

Several types of police operate within Mexico at federal, state, and local levels. However, there is a general perception that police and political corruption is endemic at all levels, with the mordida (“bite”), which can alternatively be seen as a bribe or as unofficial, informal payment for official service, remaining a mainstay.

Mexico’s armed forces include an air force, a navy with about one-fifth of the military’s total personnel, and an army constituting nearly three-fourths of the total. Military service is mandatory at age 18 for a period of one year. The military has not openly interfered with elections or governance since the 1920s, in marked contrast with civil-military relations elsewhere in Latin America.

Sometimes the military takes part in law enforcement, particularly in counternarcotics operations, and it has often focused its efforts on perceived threats to internal security, including groups suspected of insurgency or terrorism. For example, many military and police units were deployed in southern Mexico in the late 20th century to combat the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN; also called the Zapatistas), which launched an open rebellion in 1994 in Chiapas (and remained active more than a decade later). Although the government respects the human rights of most citizens, serious abuses of power have been reported as part of the security operations in southern Mexico and in the policing of indigenous communities and poor urban neighbourhoods.

Health and welfare

There are pronounced differences in health conditions from region to region within Mexico. In general, rural areas have much higher mortality and morbidity levels than do urban areas. Regions with large indigenous populations, such as Chiapas, Oaxaca, and portions of Guerrero, as well as isolated mountainous sections of the Mesa Central, have especially low health standards and high death rates. There also are great differences in health conditions among social classes in cities. Poor and indigenous Mexicans tend to suffer from an inordinate share of illness associated with unsafe water supplies, infections, and respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, as well as with physical violence. Generally speaking, the leading causes of death in Mexico are diseases of the circulatory system, diabetes mellitus, cancers, accidents and violence, and diseases of the digestive and respiratory systems.

Federally subsidized medical and hospital care is available to all Mexican citizens. Several government institutions, including the Mexican Social Security Institute and the Security and Social Services Institute for Government Workers, operate hospitals. Public medicine, like public education, is considered inferior to private care, however, and those who can afford it avail themselves of private physicians and hospitals.

Clinics, though sometimes attended only by a nurse, are found throughout the country. Anything more than the most basic medical needs, however, must be handled in the cities. The quality of medical service varies throughout the country, with Mexico City by far the principal centre for specialized treatment. The overall quality of medical care in Mexico lags behind that available in the United States and Europe, and many Mexicans travel outside the country for more-sophisticated surgical procedures or treatments.

In spite of government efforts to extend health care to disadvantaged citizens, in rural areas and among poorer families, modern medicine is often considered too expensive or difficult to obtain, or it is not trusted. In many cases curanderos (traditional healers) or shamans are sought for their knowledge of curative herbs and other folk remedies. Hot springs and saunalike sweat baths are used in some indigenous communities.

Housing

A lack of adequate housing is one of Mexico’s most serious problems. Within the cities the federal government has built multiunit housing projects, but urban populations have increased more rapidly than new units can be constructed, and economic difficulties have reduced the funds available for new construction. Although substandard housing is more visible in urban areas, living conditions are also unhealthful in some rural areas. In virtually all urban areas, peripheral squatter settlements are a major feature of the landscape. Rural migrants, as well as members of the urban underclass, build makeshift housing, often of used or discarded materials, on unoccupied lands at the edges of cities. These colonias initially lack the most basic urban services (water, electricity, sewerage), but most evolve over time into very modest but livable communities.

Education

Mexico has made significant efforts to improve educational opportunities for its people. School attendance is required for children ages 6 to 18, and since 2004 preschool has been mandatory as well. In addition to increasing the number of schools for children, adult literacy programs have been promoted vigorously since the 1970s. By the turn of the 21st century it was estimated that about nine-tenths of Mexicans were literate, up nearly 20 percent since 1970.

Public schools in Mexico are funded by the federal government. Although nearly three-fourths of all primary public schools are located in rural areas, such schools are the poorest in the country and often do not cover the primary cycle. Many internal migrants move to cities because of the availability of better schools for their children and the social opportunities that derive from an education. In rural areas as well as in many low-income urban areas, teachers need only a secondary education to be certified to teach. Despite increases in the numbers of schoolrooms, teachers, and educational supplies, about one-seventh of all school-age children do not attend school, and almost one-third of adults have not completed primary school.

Nevertheless, nearly half of the Mexican population has completed a secondary (high school) degree, though secondary schools are virtually nonexistent in rural areas. As with primary education, private secondary schools are considered vastly superior to public ones, and families who can afford it send their children to private schools. This contributes to the socioeconomic imbalance that greatly favours the middle and upper classes.

Universities are found only in the largest cities. Moreover, of the more than 50 universities in the country, one-fifth are located in Mexico City, and a high proportion of all university students study there. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; UNAM), the College of Mexico, and the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education are among the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the country. Although two million university students are enrolled in courses every year, less than one-eighth of the population has a tertiary degree.

Independence

Although the Spanish crown initially rejected O’Donojú’s recognition of Mexican independence, the date now recognized as that of separation from Old Spain is in fact Aug. 24, 1821.

The Mexican Empire, 1821–23

The first Mexican Empire spanned only a short transitional period during which Mexico became an independent republic. Independence from the former mother country had been the only glue which bound republicans and monarchists together, but, once that elusive goal had been achieved, the intrinsic animosity between the two came to dominate the body politic.

Iturbide first became president of a council of regents, which convoked a congress to draw up a new constitution. Deputies to the congress represented the intendancies. When representatives from the Central American intendancies, part of the old viceroyalty of New Spain, declared that they did not wish to remain part of the Mexican Empire, they were allowed to withdraw and to organize their own governments.

On the evening of May 18, 1822, military groups in Mexico City proclaimed Iturbide Emperor Agustín I, and on the next day a majority in congress ratified the “people’s choice” and recommended that the monarchy be hereditary, not elective. Agustín I was crowned in a pompous ceremony on July 21. The empire was recognized by the United States on Dec. 12, 1822, when the Mexican minister was officially received in Washington, D.C. But even then Agustín’s power and prestige were ebbing, and conflict soon developed between the military hero-emperor and the primarily civilian congress. On Oct. 31, 1822, the emperor dismissed congress and ruled through an appointed 45-man junta. The act, condemned by many as arbitrary, provided a pretext to revolt. Among the rebel leaders was General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who would dominate Mexico’s political life for the next third of a century. In Veracruz, on Dec. 2, 1822, Santa Anna proclaimed that Mexico should become a republic, a position supported by many rebels and liberal leaders. Agustín was forced to reconvene congress and to abdicate. In 1824 he returned from European exile but was arrested and shot. This first epoch of independent Mexican national life foreshadowed many problems of the developing republic.

The early republic

Until they adopted a republican constitution in 1824, the Mexican people had little or no previous experience in self-government. Their economy was precarious; mining, a mainstay in colonial times, had declined during the many years of fighting, and widespread anti-Spanish feelings had caused an exodus of Spaniards, depleting both the country’s capital reserves and its pool of trained people. Political instability made borrowing abroad expensive, and nearly all public revenues had to come from customs receipts, which were pledged well in advance. As Mexico’s national debt mounted, so did its problems, and it became trapped in a vicious, seemingly unbreakable cycle. Whenever public monies were insufficient to pay the army, its officers revolted, captured the government, and negotiated international loans. The high interest payments on such loans reduced available funds for education and other social and cultural improvements, which many Mexican leaders thought were urgent requirements.

The constitution of 1824 set a number of democratic goals and provided for a federal republic, consisting of 19 states, four territories, and the Mexico City federal district. Indigenous peoples lost their special colonial status, and accompanying protections, as wards of the government. In many ways they were worse off during the 19th century than they had been under the paternalism of the Spanish crown. In addition, restrictive state legislation excluded the great mass of peasantry from the political process. Because chattel slavery had greatly declined in Mexico and was less widespread than elsewhere in the Americas, a decree abolishing it in 1829 was largely symbolic.

Under various labels, two factions contended for control. The Centralists, who were generally conservative, favoured a strong central government in the viceregal tradition, a paid national army, and Roman Catholicism as the exclusive religion. Opposed to them were the Federalists, who favoured limited central government, local militia, and nearly autonomous states; they tended to be anticlerical and opposed the continuance of colonial fueros, which gave special status to ecclesiastics and the military and exempted them from various civil obligations.

The pendulum of power swung back and forth between the two groups. In 1824 Guadalupe Victoria, a Federalist and a leader in the independence movement, was elected Mexico’s first president. Centralists replaced Federalists in 1828. A Federalist revolt in 1829 put Vicente Guerrero in the presidential chair, but he was soon overthrown by the Centralists, who held power until 1832. In 1833 another change placed Federalists in power until 1836, when Centralists again regained control and held it for nearly a decade.

The age of Santa Anna: Texas and the Mexican-American War

After the downfall of Iturbide, Mexican politics revolved for some time about the enigmatic personality of the charismatic Antonio López de Santa Anna, who seemingly had few fixed ideological or political beliefs. Allied with the Federalists, Santa Anna was first chosen president in 1833, but, rather than serve, he placed the liberal vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías, at the head of the government until Farías and his group in 1834 attacked the privileges of the clergy. Then Santa Anna assumed his presidential post and nullified the anticlerical legislation. Before his political career ended he would be in and out of the presidency 10 more times.

Santa Anna was president when difficulties over Texas first began to mount. Under favourable terms, some 30,000 U.S. immigrants had populated that previously desolate area. Fearful that their growing numbers posed a threat, the Mexican government in 1830 closed the border to further immigration and imposed on the Texans oppressive restrictions that contravened the Mexican constitution. When Santa Anna adopted a new constitution in 1836, and in the process eliminated all vestiges of states’ rights, Texas declared itself an independent republic. Santa Anna quickly gathered an army to crush the revolt. He met with initial success when he trapped a small Texas garrison at the Alamo and totally eliminated it, but he was defeated and captured by Texas forces in April 1836. Though Mexico made no further efforts to reconquer Texas, it refused to recognize its independence.

At that time a doctrine now known as Manifest Destiny was a driving sociopolitical force in the United States. It envisioned a United States that would extend from sea to shining sea and perhaps would ultimately encompass all of Mexico. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, a move that Mexico saw as the first aggressive step and one which prompted a rupture in diplomatic relations. Santa Anna was overthrown for his apparent willingness to negotiate with the United States.

Although the United States claimed that the southern boundary of Texas was the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte), the boundary had always been the Nueces River. Shortly after his election in March 1845, U.S. President James K. Polk tried to secure an agreement on the Rio Grande boundary and to purchase California, but the Mexican government refused to discuss either matter. Polk ordered U.S. troops to occupy the disputed territory between the rivers. When Mexican and U.S. patrols clashed in April 1846, Polk asserted that American blood had been shed on American soil—an outrage that he claimed required action. Less-warlike politicians, such as the Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln, to no avail submitted resolutions asking Polk to point out the precise location of this outrage. Polk’s congressional majority formally declared war on Mexico in April.

Without major difficulty, U.S. troops captured New Mexico and Upper California. General Zachary Taylor led the main U.S. force to quick victories in northeastern Mexico. At that juncture the government of Mexican president Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga was overthrown, and Santa Anna reemerged as president in September 1846. Almost immediately, Santa Anna mobilized Mexican forces and marched northward, boasting that the superior numbers and courage of his men meant that he would sign a peace treaty in Washington. Although Taylor and Santa Anna fought a close battle at Buena Vista, Santa Anna was beaten and forced to retreat on Feb. 23, 1847. Both sides sustained heavy losses.

A change in U.S. strategy left Taylor holding ground in northern Mexico; it was decided that Mexico could be beaten only by capturing Mexico City, via Veracruz. General Winfield Scott was given command of the expedition. On April 18, 1847, he defeated Santa Anna in the critical battle at Cerro Gordo. Though Mexican resistance continued to be formidable, Scott captured Mexico City on Sept. 14, 1847. Santa Anna went into voluntary exile while a new Mexican government negotiated peace.

Dated Feb. 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally ended hostility between the two countries. By its terms Mexico gave up its claims to Texas and ceded all of the territory now occupied by the U.S. states of Utah, Nevada, and California; most of New Mexico and Arizona; and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. It was a humiliating dismemberment of almost half of Mexico’s national territory (albeit a loss of only about 1 percent of the country’s population). The United States paid Mexico $15,000,000 and assumed $3,250,000 in claims held by U.S. citizens against Mexico. Mexican citizens who suddenly found themselves residing in an expanded United States were given the option of returning to Mexico or becoming U.S. citizens and were guaranteed that their property rights would be inviolably respected. Many would learn that the promises looked better on paper than in reality, and they often found themselves being treated as second-class citizens.

After the war Santa Anna figured in one more major episode before the political scene changed. In 1853 conservatives seized power and invited him to become dictator. Among other things, on Dec. 16, 1853, Santa Anna decreed that the dictatorship should be prolonged indefinitely and that he should be addressed as “His Most Serene Highness.” To raise funds for an expanded army, he sold territory south of the Gila River to the United States for $10,000,000; this Gadsden Purchase, as it is now called, was the last significant boundary change of the Mexican Republic and included the southern portions of what are now the U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona.

La Reforma

Since independence a new generation of Mexicans had been born; appalled at the easy victory the United States had won, the more thoughtful among them felt that Mexico’s survival as an independent country depended on fundamental reform. Among the new faces was Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian educated as a middle-class liberal, who had moved to New Orleans and had discussed and planned Mexico’s future with fellow expatriates. With no military force to implement their plans, they bided time until their opportunity came, in 1854, when Juan Álvarez, a surviving hero of independence, and Ignacio Comonfort, a political moderate, proclaimed a liberal rebellion against Santa Anna and forced him out of the presidency.

Neither Álvarez, who served a short term as president, nor Comonfort, who succeeded him, had any clearly defined program. The role of the returned expatriates was to act as a brain trust to carry out La Reforma (“The Reform”). Its aims were to abolish remnants of colonialism by removing special ecclesiastical and military privileges; to separate church and state by secularizing education, marriages, and burials; to reduce the economic power of the church by forcing it to sell its properties; to foster an economic development that envisaged Mexico as a country of yeoman farmers and small industrialists; and, above all, to establish a single standard of legal justice.

Juárez was made minister of justice. Among his first reforms was the so-called Ley Juárez (Nov. 23, 1855), which abolished fueros (special exemptions) and the use of special military and ecclesiastical courts in civil cases. The minister of finance, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, sponsored the Ley Lerdo (June 25, 1856), which restricted the right of ecclesiastical and civil corporations to own lands by decreeing that church lands not directly used for religious purposes and lands held in common by indigenous communities (ejidos) must be sold.

The reformers called a convention to draft a new constitution, which would provide a legal base for the reform. It was promulgated on Feb. 12, 1857, but did not become effective until the following Sept. 16, the 47th anniversary of the “Grito de Dolores.” The constitution of 1857 prohibited slavery and abridgments of freedom of speech or press; it abolished special courts and prohibited civil and ecclesiastical corporations from owning property, except buildings in use; it eliminated monopolies; it prescribed that Mexico was to be a representative, democratic, republican country; and it defined the states and their responsibilities. This constitution, which remained in force until 1917, increased the power of the central executive.

Neither the religious community nor the military accepted the 1857 constitution, and both inveighed against the reform, calling for retention of “religion and fueros.” The church excommunicated all civil officials who swore to support the constitution. When civil war erupted, Comonfort went into exile after his efforts at compromise failed; Juárez automatically succeeded him as constitutional president. The conservatives captured Mexico City and set up a competing regime. Juárez and his government moved to Veracruz, where they controlled the customs receipts.

Foreign powers, rarely bashful about aggressively asserting their influence in Mexican affairs, became even more influential. On April 6, 1859, the United States recognized the Juárez government; President James Buchanan permitted war matériel to be shipped to Juárez’s forces. Americans were encouraged to serve the liberal cause as volunteers, but Spain and France generally favoured the conservatives, as did Great Britain.

In July 1859 Juárez issued a series of decrees: all church property except buildings used for worship was to be confiscated without compensation; all marriages apart from civil marriages were declared annulled; the formal separation of church and state was proclaimed; cemeteries were declared public property, and burial fees were abolished. Moneys from the sale of confiscated church property, though less than anticipated, speeded the end of the civil war. On Dec. 22, 1860, the liberals won a critical battle, and, when the conservative president, Miguel Miramón, fled, the conservative cause collapsed. The victorious liberal army of about 25,000 men entered Mexico City on New Year’s Day, 1861. On his return (January 11) Juárez was greeted by an enthusiastic populace who welcomed the end of the long and devastating civil war and the reestablishment of government under the constitution of 1857.

French intervention

Exiled Mexican conservatives, who continued to intrigue, enlisted the help of a powerful ally, the French ruler Napoleon III, who wanted to create a Latin league that would include the Mediterranean lands and the former possessions of Spain and Portugal in the New World as well. (The term Latin America dates from this time and concept.) With its strategic position and its economic potential, Mexico seemed especially attractive to the Napoleonic imperial scheme. A French bastion in Mexico would check the Manifest Destiny of the United States and provide a base from which Central and South American protectorates could be added. The fact that the United States was engaged in the American Civil War (1861–65) was a determining element. In 1861 Napoleon III found it convenient to believe the Mexican conservatives’ assertions that the masses of Mexican people would support his intervention to restore religion and establish a second monarchy in independent Mexico.

Mexico’s chaotic economic situation afforded Napoleon III the perfect opportunity to implement his scheme. The Juárez government had a huge foreign debt, and in 1861 it suspended all payments to Spain, Britain, and France. The three European powers prepared to send a punitive expedition to Mexico. The intervention was spearheaded by Spain, the forces of which landed at Veracruz on Dec. 14, 1861, and were followed soon after by French and British contingents. When the allies fell into dispute over the $15,000,000 French claim for payment of certain questionable bonds, both Spain and Great Britain disengaged from the joint venture.

The French expeditionary force began its march toward Mexico City. When the Mexican army made a stand in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862—a victory recalled to this day in Cinco de Mayo celebrations—the French retreated to await reinforcements. Napoleon dispatched 30,000 more troops under the command of the French general Élie-Frédéric Forey. The Mexicans could not withstand French might, and on June 10, 1863, Forey rode as conqueror into Mexico City. The French rapidly secured much of central Mexico, forcing Juárez and his government to keep constantly on the move in the north.

Napoleon III had already identified a pair of puppets to place on the Mexican throne: Maximilian of the house of Habsburg and his wife, Carlota, daughter of the king of Belgium. Assured of Napoleon’s continued military support and the economic backing of the British, Maximilian and Carlota arrived in Veracruz on May 28, 1864, having passed through Rome to confer with the pope before they embarked. On June 12 Emperor Maximilian was welcomed in Mexico City.

Maximilian attempted to follow a policy of national conciliation, hoping to unite Mexican factions and interests. But he proved too much a Habsburg to be an effective tool of Napoleon’s schemes, too much a liberal to please the conservatives who had engineered his coronation, and too tainted by conservative sponsorship to win republican support. Maximilian was perhaps less naive than he has been pictured. Not fully convinced that a majority of Mexicans welcomed him as emperor nor sure that he should place full reliance on French troops, he tried to create a Mexican rural guard and a separate imperial army around a nucleus of Austrian and Belgian volunteers. His proposal to reduce the number of regular Mexican army generals to 18 brought early disillusionment to the army, a mainstay of conservatism, which had expected Maximilian to be a puppet. The Mexican officers became further irritated when, with Maximilian’s approval, French officers outranked them.

At the same time, clerical groups, eager to reap rewards for their efforts on the emperor’s behalf, pressed him to reverse La Reforma. A papal nuncio from Rome arrived with a message asking that Maximilian revoke the controversial laws of La Reforma, establish Roman Catholicism as the exclusive religion, restore the religious orders, remove the church from its dependence on civil authorities, turn education over to ecclesiastics, and return properties confiscated and sold by the republicans. Replying that he, not outsiders, would decide such matters, Maximilian issued decrees establishing religious toleration, with Roman Catholicism favoured but still dependent on the state. He confirmed that the previous sales of church property under the laws of La Reforma were legal and that revenues the church had received from property Juárez had nationalized were to be ceded to the state. Thus, Maximilian’s conservative support further dwindled because the clergy and their followers felt betrayed.

In September 1864 Maximilian took what amounted to a guided tour of the cities that supported his empire. The warm welcomes he received from the people led him to conclude that a majority of Mexicans wanted peace and justice, which the activities of the republican guerrillas threatened. He therefore decreed on November 4 that, thenceforth, republicans would be considered bandits and brigands, subject to extreme penalties; this negated Maximilian’s attempts to woo their supporters by inviting them into his council of state.

In 1865 French troops chased Juárez to, but not over, the U.S. border. Believing that the Mexican president had left national territory and that republicanism had therefore collapsed, Maximilian on October 2 issued a strong decree, ordering that all guerrillas captured carrying arms should be shot within 24 hours; the same penalties were to apply to persons who hid them or otherwise helped them. Juárez had earlier issued a parallel decree (January 1862) against those who aided the French interventionists and imperialists.

French troops, though effective in keeping republicans on the outskirts of major productive areas, were also costly. Napoleon’s Mexican adventure came under heavy press and parliamentary fire in France as costs in men and money mounted without economic or political advantages to compensate for the expenditures. There was criticism from abroad as well; with its civil war ended, the United States began to assert its influence. William H. Seward, the U.S. secretary of state, brought mounting diplomatic pressure on Napoleon to withdraw French troops; in February 1866 Napoleon agreed to clear foreign troops from Mexico by November 1867. A U.S. request to the Austrian government to stop enrollment of volunteers for the Mexican imperial army also brought an affirmative response.

In liquidating his Mexican venture, Napoleon said that, since Maximilian had not carried out his part of the pact to bring peace and orderly government to Mexico, the French were relieved of their obligations for military and financial support. Stunned, Maximilian sought to have the decision reversed. The empress Carlota tried without success to persuade the French ruler to honour his solemn pledge. From Paris she traveled to Rome to plead with the pope; there she went mad and was taken to Belgium, where she lingered insane until her death in 1927. The French commander, Achille-François Bazaine, ordered to withdraw all French troops immediately, auctioned off military material not worth shipping to France—including horses and saddles—and destroyed large supplies of powder and projectiles rather than turn them over to Maximilian. In February 1867 Bazaine left Mexico City, and by March 12 his army of nearly 29,000 men had embarked.

As French power withdrew, republican forces reconquered Mexico, and Maximilian was left with only a regiment of Austrian hussars, a battalion of infantry, and a small army of relatively untrained Mexican draftees. After first considering abdication, Maximilian decided to defend his imperial status and his honour as a Habsburg by making as strong a stand as possible, though planning, in the event of defeat, to negotiate an honourable exile. With these resolves he concentrated most of his troops—9,000 men—at Querétaro, a city loyal to the imperial cause. On May 5, 1867, the republican forces laid siege, initially with 32,000 men, later with an additional 10,000. By May 14 the starving imperialist force, reduced to about 5,000, had decided to withdraw and take a stand in the mountains. A disaffected imperial officer, in return for a promise that Maximilian be spared, placed republican soldiers, whom he passed off as relief troops, at strategic places in Querétaro. The siege ended the next day when Maximilian and his generals surrendered.

Under Juárez’s decrees of 1862, Maximilian and his two leading generals were court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad. President Juárez, aware that almost 50,000 Mexicans had lost their lives fighting the French, refused to be swayed by the petitions for mercy that poured in from foreign governments. He wanted to demonstrate that Mexico could act independently; that, as La Reforma contended, all men were equal under law; that foreign monarchical adventures in Mexico were futile; and that the honour of the Mexican dead would be redeemed. Maximilian and the generals were executed on June 19, 1867, terminating a bizarre interlude of Mexican history.

The restored republic

When Juárez reentered Mexico City on July 15, 1867, his immediate task was to abate the rancors of civil war. The vindicated Juárez regime took few major reprisals—principal imperialists were fined, some were imprisoned for short terms, and a few were exiled. One of Juárez’s first acts was to start rebuilding the shattered economy. In an era of goodwill engendered by the sympathy and aid the United States had extended to the Mexican cause, the claims of the two countries against each other were settled by peaceful arbitration. Diplomatic relations were gradually reestablished with Europe.

In December 1867 Juárez was reelected president. Apart from trying to foster political tranquillity, his main aims were to improve public education and to put the economy on a sound footing. In part to outmaneuver the Roman Catholic Church, Juárez entrusted the development of a national educational system to Gabino Barreda, a follower of the French thinker Auguste Comte, who had said that the human mind and society passed through three successive stages—religious, metaphysical, and positive. Known as positivists, Barreda and his followers contended that La Reforma, by displacing the church and militarism, had done away with the earlier two stages and that Mexico was in the third, or positivist, stage. The public-education law for the Federal District, which was to serve as the national model, stressed the secular state as the inculcator of scientific ethical norms, with “Liberty, order, and progress” as the means, base, and product of the system.

The chief architect of economic rehabilitation was Matías Romero, who had been Juárez’s ambassador to the United States and who believed that Mexico’s development was dependent on three basic elements: immigration, communication networks, and the exploitation of natural resources. In 1867 and ’68 the government renewed concessions to British capitalists for the completion of the Veracruz–Mexico City railway and issued concessions for others; it authorized the opening of new roads and the extension of the telegraph system. Work was begun on reforming the tax systems and tariff schedules.

The reelection of Juárez in 1871 was contested more heatedly than that of 1867 had been. Thereafter, despite formidable opposition in Congress, tariff reform was approved, as was Mexico’s adoption of the metric system, which ended the chaotic colonial system of weights and measures. After a short illness, Juárez died suddenly on July 18, 1872, his death closing one era and opening another. Behind him lay Mexico’s long colonial history and its partial survivals through the early 19th century. The notion of a Mexican monarchy had been forever buried with Maximilian. Under Juárez, Mexicans had begun to modernize the economy and some of the social institutions, to expand rail, road, and telegraph networks, and to develop secular education. These advances presaged even more dramatic change that was to occur during the last quarter of the 19th century.

Juárez’s death also brought temporary political peace. Without incident, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, the president of the Supreme Court, and next in line of succession, was sworn in as acting president on July 19. Congress immediately began to lavish posthumous honours on Juárez, who by his innate abilities and great strength of character had led his people through unprecedented travail. He remains a major figure in the history of Mexico.

A national election placed Lerdo in the presidential chair in his own right on Nov. 16, 1872. The course Juárez had charted remained unchanged. On New Year’s Day, 1873, the Veracruz–Mexico City railway was inaugurated. The archbishop of Mexico blessed the new line and in doing so signified a reduction in church-state tensions. Congress and the executive branch of government continued to dole out railway and telegraph concessions. To safeguard the country against future bloodshed, Congress on May 31 added specific laws from La Reforma to the constitution of 1857—church and state were explicitly declared independent of each other; freedom of religion was proclaimed; church acquisition of real estate was abolished; religious oaths were banned in civil courts; forced labour was forbidden; and personal liberty in respect to labour, education, and religion was declared inviolable. The degree to which La Reforma had triumphed was evidenced by the fact that no national movement developed against these additions to the organic laws. The Lerdo government in 1874 renewed diplomatic relations with France, Spain, and Prussia.

The age of Porfirio Díaz

For 35 years, from 1876 until a political revolution unseated him in 1911, the personality of Porfirio Díaz dominated the history of his country. Like Juárez, Díaz was a poor Indian from Oaxaca, but he was of Mixtec rather than Zapotec heritage. Educated locally, he had chosen a military career and had become an outstanding general in the republican cause against the French intervention and empire. Although he vied for the presidency against Juárez in 1867 and again in 1871, their ideological differences were not great. When in 1875 Lerdo ran for reelection, Díaz led a successful revolt and assumed the presidency in November 1876.

Díaz took the blueprint for Mexico’s future that Juárez and Lerdo had elaborated and implemented it. After clearing out pockets of political resistance during his first term of office, he turned the presidency over to Manuel González, a companion in arms. Díaz won the election again in 1884 and was regularly returned to that office through 1910. During his long regime he scrupulously kept democratic and constitutional forms intact, partly in the conviction that it was the president’s duty to train the unready Mexican people to use them properly.

Around him Díaz gathered many intellectuals (the científicos). They were positivists who stressed the need for rational planning and development. The emphasis was on economic development to assure social progress. How such development was to be achieved was translated into one of Díaz’s political slogans, “Pan o palo” (“Bread or the stick”), meaning that acquiescence to official policies would ensure livelihood, even wealth, but failure to agree would bring sure reprisals—harassment, imprisonment, death. More significantly from a philosophical and practical point of view, liberty was dropped from the earlier positivist triad of liberty, order, and progress. It was the price the Mexican people were expected to pay for the benefits the científicos’ policies would provide.

Capital, though badly needed, could not be attracted until Mexico had tidied up its international and national fiscal affairs. Mexican finances were placed on a solid base, and a stable currency was established. With guarantees of political and social tranquillity, foreign investment was encouraged and obtained. European and U.S. funds built some 15,000 miles (24,000 km) of railways, provided electricity and streetcars for the cities, created industrial complexes, rehabilitated port facilities, and developed the mining of industrial metals. Early petroleum concessions to foreigners laid the groundwork for serious problems later, when world navies shifted from coal to oil and when automobiles were mass-produced.

A complex mechanism in which all major and most minor decisions rested in the hands of the president evolved during the first two decades of the Díaz regime, or Porfiriato. The success of the practice rested on self-interest; Díaz made it worthwhile for everyone to support the system. For the most part, the small body of intellectuals was absorbed into the expanding bureaucracy or the subsidized press. The army and the church were made handmaidens of the regime rather than its adversaries; generals were encouraged to become entrepreneurs. While retaining the laws of La Reforma on the books, Díaz was purposely conciliatory toward the church and allowed it to regain some of its former economic power without letting it develop significant political influence.

The regime also perfected instruments of repression and control, though for many years it used them sparingly. Wages remained embarrassingly low and working hours too long throughout the period, and urban workers enjoyed no rights that management was obliged to respect. The labourers on Mexico’s large estates fared no better as most were landless and subject to the arbitrary authority of resident bosses (mayordomos). Education remained a near monopoly of elites in the larger cities. Troublesome elements such as the Yaqui Indians were inducted en masse and shipped as cheap labour to the sisal plantations of Yucatán or the tobacco fields of Oaxaca. Although technically elected by the local citizenry, governors were in effect personal appointees of the president. Their actions were monitored by jefes políticos (“political chiefs”), who reported directly to the president and on his authorization intervened in municipal and state affairs. An elite constabulary, the Rurales, like the Texas Rangers and Canadian Mounted Police, created a myth of ubiquity that eliminated the brigandage and banditry characteristic of the earlier 19th-century Mexican countryside. While pacification was welcomed, it was accompanied by fear and intimidation in rural areas as the Rurales seldom respected due process or civil liberties.

In an era in which material success was highly regarded, Díaz’s accomplishments were praised, but his popularity began to decline before the turn of the century. Prosperity had been preempted by a relatively small group, many of whom were foreigners. The Mexican economic and social elite self-consciously aped European (especially French) modes of dress, education, and even language. Between the affluent and the growing urban and rural proletariat there was an expanding middle-class body. Meanwhile, a new generation, which could recall none of the chaos of the days before Porfirio Díaz took charge, began to question the system. As criticism increased, so did repression. This unique confluence of circumstances midwived the great Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Precursors of revolution

Mexicans began to question the country’s apathetic acceptance of the Porfirian peace. The earliest and most vocal critics were Mexican radical groups, perhaps the most important of which called itself Regeneration. Its members were anarchists who adapted their dogmas to the Mexican scene. While always small in number and often ineffective in action, this group had great influence. Many of the reforms and programs it advocated were embodied in the Mexican constitution of 1917.

The leader of the Regeneration group was Ricardo Flores Magón, who had been born in Oaxaca of an indigenous mother and a mestizo father and had been sent for further education to Mexico City, where he had turned to idealistic student activism. For leading a small demonstration against the reelection of Díaz in 1892, he was jailed for the first of many times. The group’s movement took form in 1900, when Camilo Arriaga, a well-to-do engineer in San Luis Potosí, organized first a club and then a small party to restore the liberalism of Juárez. Arriaga called a national meeting of liberal clubs in 1901, and a short time later most of the small band were jailed, and their newspaper, Regeneración, which Flores Magón edited, was suppressed. After they served their prison sentences, the young radicals fled north to the United States and Canada, settling for a while in St. Louis, Mo., where they formally organized the Mexican Liberal Party. It was anarcho-syndicalist in orientation, dedicated to the overthrow of the Mexican government and the total renovation of Mexican society.

In 1906 the Regeneration group published a comprehensive program in the form of a manifesto that had wide, if clandestine, circulation in Mexico. It advocated a one-term presidency, guarantees of civil liberties, breaking the hold of the Roman Catholic Church, vast expansion of free public education, and land reform. It asked that Mexican citizenship be a prerequisite to property ownership and that unused land be distributed to the landless. The manifesto proposed confiscation of the wealth that Díaz and the científicos had illegally acquired, the abolition of child labour, guaranteed minimum wages, and improved conditions for workers. In muted tones it criticized capitalism as a system of exploitation. The Regeneration group drew its main lines of thought from Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian revolutionary writer who believed that the power of any institution, including government, that exercised controls over individuals should be reduced.

Many charges by the Regeneration and similar groups were borne out when Díaz’s troops, in bloody fashion, broke strikes in the textile region of Veracruz and the copper-mining regions of the northwest state of Sonora. Several of these strikes had been fomented by Regeneration organizers at the same time that U.S. muckrakers were exposing the evils of corrupt government, big business, and other aspects of life in the United States and abroad. Possibly to refute their unfavourable reports, Díaz gave an interview in 1908 to an American reporter, James Creelman, that became a milestone in prerevolutionary history. To blunt charges of one-man rule, Díaz very carefully but clearly said that in his view the time had come for Mexico to advance toward democracy, that he would welcome an opposition party, that he would be most happy to sustain and guide the opposition party, and that to inaugurate a democratic government in Mexico he would forget himself. This fell like a bombshell in Mexico, where most readers failed to note that he had not specified a time. It was widely believed that this implied he would not run for the presidency in 1910. Mexican newspapers and independent publishers not only reprinted the interview but also began openly to speculate on the upcoming elections.

Two main opposition groups soon emerged. One backed General Bernardo Reyes as vice presidential candidate over Díaz’s handpicked candidate. Reyes forthrightly opposed científico theories and practices and, as governor of the progressive northern state of Nuevo León, had not only stimulated the modernization impulse but had also initiated a series of far-reaching reforms, including a workman’s compensation law.

The other opposition party, the Anti-Reelectionists, had been created largely through the efforts of Francisco I. Madero, then a political unknown, whose efforts would subsequently elevate him to the highest place in the revolutionary pantheon as the “Apostle of Democracy.” Born into one of the richest families in Mexico, whose agricultural enterprises spread over much of northern Mexico, Madero was educated in the United States and France. In his own right he became an enlightened entrepreneur and amassed a considerable personal fortune.

Madero concerned himself with Mexico’s position in a rapidly changing world. Mexican food prices were rising, and rural and urban standards of living were dropping. He attributed Mexico’s social inequities to the prolonged political dictatorship. He helped journalists to expose these matters and initially provided considerable early financial support to the Regeneration group, but he disassociated from them after about 1907 when it became clearer that they intended to destroy, not reform, the system.

Madero, setting about to organize a national party to compete in the 1910 elections, published La sucesión presidencial en 1910 (1908; “The Presidential Succession in 1910”) as a campaign document, two-thirds of which dealt with the history of Mexico and the corrupting influences of absolute power and the rest with his program to revive the democracy that had atrophied for so long. Despite harassment, Madero carried on a vigorous and wearying campaign in the summer of 1909. During an interview with Díaz, he was surprised by the dictator’s remoteness from current issues. On the other hand, Madero’s campaign speeches were well received and a source of encouragement to the Anti-Reelectionists.

On June 14 Madero was arrested and jailed and thus became the martyr and victim of the system he was trying peacefully to change. Since it was perfectly clear that Díaz was not going to permit free and honest elections, Madero and his followers decided that the only hope of improving Mexico was through armed revolt. On Oct. 4, 1910, the Chamber of Deputies, which had assembled as the electoral college, declared that Díaz had been reelected. On October 5 Madero managed to escape from San Luis Potosí, where he had first been jailed and subsequently had been confined under house arrest. He arrived on October 7 in San Antonio, Texas, where with aides he prepared and issued, as of the day of his escape, the Plan of San Luis Potosí, which proclaimed the principles of “effective suffrage, no reelection.” Madero declared that Díaz was illegally president of Mexico. Designating Sunday, November 20, as the day when citizens should take up arms against the Díaz government, Madero promised that a successful revolution would institute political reforms.

But on November 20, the official birthday of the Mexican Revolution, no mass uprisings took place. Nevertheless, small bands of guerrillas, most of them in northern Mexico, kept the rebellion alive while Madero used his family fortune to supply them with arms from Texas. Under the leadership of Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa, the northern rebels began to defeat Federalist forces, who held most of the strategic rail lines, especially those emanating from Ciudad Juárez, on the U.S. border, where the Federalist troops had consolidated. Until the revolutionists laid siege to that city, no more than 2,500 armed men were engaged in the Madero revolution.

The Mexican Revolution and its aftermath, 1910–40

The initial goal of the Mexican Revolution was simply the overthrow of the Díaz dictatorship, but that relatively simple political movement broadened into a major economic and social upheaval that presaged the fundamental character of Mexico’s 20th-century experience. During the long struggle, the Mexican people developed a sense of identity and purpose, perhaps unmatched by any other Latin American republic. Many reforms had been established by 1940, when the goals of the revolution were institutionalized as guidelines for future Mexican policies. The violence of 1910 gave a clear start to the Mexican Revolution, but scholars disagree on an end point: as a convention many use the year 1920, but some end it with the 1917 constitution or events in the 1920s, and still others argue that the revolution slowly unravelled until 1940.

The military revolution

On Feb. 14, 1911, Madero crossed into Mexico near Ciudad Juárez to head his forces. In the next few months the rebels learned how debilitated the Díaz army had become; led by aged generals, the Federalist troops lacked discipline, cohesion, unity of command, and effectiveness. Under these circumstances the revolution gained ground and momentum. The surrender of the Federal commander at Juárez at May 10 marked the beginning of the end. An agreement negotiated with the Díaz regime provided that Díaz would resign, that an interim president, Francisco León de la Barra, would call general elections, and that revolutionary forces would be discharged. On May 25 Díaz resigned and sailed for Paris. Several revolutionary bands, including that of Emiliano Zapata, resisted the military demobilization previously agreed upon.

Madero won the presidential election in October 1911, but his new government was able to withstand constant attacks from the right and left for only 15 months. A series of unsuccessful revolts culminated in a successful plot in Feb. 1913. From Feb. 9 to Feb. 18, 1913—known in Mexican history as the Decena Trágica (“Ten Tragic Days”)—downtown Mexico City was converted into a battle zone. Civilian casualties were high, and the fighting ended only after the commander of the government forces, Victoriano Huerta, together with his troops, changed sides and joined the rebels. Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, were promptly arrested, enabling Huerta to seize the presidency for himself.

Shortly thereafter, presumably on Huerta’s orders, Madero and Pino Suárez were shot while being transferred from one prison to another. Their deaths rekindled revolutionary fires. In northern Mexico, Venustiano Carranza, refusing to recognize Huerta as president, demanded that the office be elective, as specified in the constitution. He called his new movement the Constitutionalist Revolution. Former chieftains such as Villa made loose alliances with Carranza. The revolution had begun to fragment, and the fighting would last for many years.

The new president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, was determined to oust Huerta and, on flimsy pretexts, landed U.S. troops at Veracruz and occupied it (see Veracruz incident). All of the revolutionary leaders except Villa rejected this external intervention in a national struggle. The combined revolutionary forces unseated Huerta in 1914 but then split over who was to exercise presidential power. Zapata in Morelos and Villa in the north joined to fight the revolutionary groups under Carranza, the most important of which was headed by General Álvaro Obregón. Obregón won a decisive victory over Villa at the Battle of Celaya in April 1915 but failed to bring the civil war to an immediate end. Sporadic warfare continued until 1920, and less organized violence reappeared even after that time.

The constitution of 1917

With most of central and southern Mexico under Constitutionalist control, Carranza in 1916 convoked a constituent congress in Querétaro to revise and update the constitution of 1857. In the course of fighting, the economic and social demands of the radical precursors had become common slogans as contending revolutionary bands bid for popular support. The constitution of 1917 incorporated the aspirations of those groups involved in the revolution. While Zapata’s followers championed the cause of agrarian reform, others in the constitutional assembly pushed for the protection of urban labour. Several groups advocated widening the educational base by making primary school available to the Mexican masses, most of whom had never had the opportunity to learn to read and write.

The constitution of 1917 specifically incorporated the major features of the 1824 and 1857 charters regarding territorial organization, civil liberties, democratic forms, and anticlerical and antimonopoly clauses. The constitution completely reversed the concept widely held in Mexico that government should take only a limited, passive role. It argued that the national government had an obligation to take an active role in promoting the social, economic, and cultural well-being of its citizens. Article 3 sketched a vast plan of secular, free, compulsory public education. Article 14 reaffirmed the sanctity of private property and contracts, but Article 27 interjected concepts of social utility and national benefit to limit the untrammeled use of private property. The most-important new concepts came in Articles 27 and 123. The former reasserted national ownership of subsoil resources and outlined alternative land-reform and agrarian programs. The latter, the Magna Carta of labour and social welfare, was set apart to highlight its importance; in addition to guaranteeing minimum wages and the right to organize and strike, it gave labour social status and destroyed the concept of it as an economic commodity to be bought at the lowest rates to maximize profits. Article 123 also outlined a comprehensive system of social security, including public health and welfare programs. Reflecting the nationalistic feelings of the revolutionaries, foreigners and foreign interests were placed under limitations.

The constitution of 1917 set the goals toward which presidents were to work. As expected, Carranza was elected president and given de jure recognition by the United States. When Zapata was betrayed and killed in 1919, the last organized opposition to the Carranza-Obregón reorganization dissolved. Villa retired from active campaigning after his raids across the border, especially one in Columbus, N.M. (March 9, 1916), had failed to embroil the United States in conflict with Carranza. Ultimately, Villa was ambushed and killed by political enemies in 1923.

The northern dynasty: Obregón and Calles

When Carranza failed to move toward immediate social reforms, General Obregón enlisted two other powerful northern Mexican chieftains, Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta, to join him in an almost bloodless coup; together they formed the northern dynasty. Carranza was killed as he fled from Mexico City, and Obregón took office as president Dec. 1, 1920. The dynasty agreed that peace was needed to rehabilitate Mexico from the devastations of nearly a decade of civil upheaval. Using a combination of force and political incentives, Obregón placated many ambitious military leaders.

Obregón began to implement the ideals set forth in the constitution. Administrative machinery was set up to distribute land to the landless and to restore communal holdings (ejidos) to villages. The government supported the Regional Confederation of Mexican Labour (Confederación Regional de Obreros Mexicanos; CROM). José Vasconcelos, who was named minister of education, was to implement the program of rural education. He sponsored a cultural program that brought Mexico worldwide fame and importance. Radical mural painters such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who were commissioned to portray Mexican and especially revolutionary history on public buildings, exalted the indigenous past. Frida Kahlo expressed similar concerns in social and political arenas, but her paintings were less public. Novelists Martín Luis Guzmán, Gregorio López y Fuentes, and Nellie Campobello used the written word to convey radical and revolutionary messages.

At the end of his term, Obregón stepped aside for Calles. Calles’s presidency followed the same general lines as had Obregón’s. Land distribution was stepped up, an irrigation program was begun, and in 1925 renewed pressure was put on the petroleum companies to exchange for leases the titles they had obtained from Díaz. Problems with the church developed when Calles instituted vigorously anticlerical measures; in retaliation the church suspended all religious ceremonies and approved and possibly sponsored a rebellion in western Mexico known as the Cristeros. Mediation of the church-state controversy was unofficially accomplished by Dwight W. Morrow, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, whose sympathetic and skillful diplomacy also eased tensions between the two countries.

In 1928 the presidential term was extended from four to six years, and the doctrine of “no reelection” was modified to mean “no successive reelection.” Obregón was the successful presidential candidate in 1928, but, as president-elect, he was assassinated by José de León Toral, a religious fanatic.

With Calles legally barred from succeeding himself, a peculiarly Mexican political party was formed: the National Revolutionary Party, which, after several incarnations, would eventually become the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Its monopoly on power would occasion major controversy in the years ahead. Formed under Calles’s inspiration, it was initially a coalition of regional and local military bosses and labour and peasant leaders. To safeguard the gains of the revolution, Calles excluded the Roman Catholic Church and other possible reactionary elements. With Calles at its head, the official party governed in the name of the revolution. A congress, drawn from party ranks, named successive, short-term presidents to fill out the term to which Obregón had been elected.

In the period 1928–34 a worldwide depression (see Great Depression) and increasing personal vested interests caused many of the older, now conservative revolutionaries, including Calles, to go slowly in implementing the reform mandates of the constitution. The ruling clique continued to be militantly anticlerical, but it withdrew support from CROM, which disintegrated. It also slowed the pace of land distribution and curtailed educational programs. On the positive side, the Calles years saw the beginnings of an irrigation and road-building program.

Resurgence under Cárdenas

Within the revolutionary family, General Lázaro Cárdenas was a respected if not outstanding revolutionary. Having quietly and faithfully worked his way up the ladder of politico-military power during the Obregón and Calles years, he seemed a safe candidate in the 1934 elections. He was also acceptable to a powerful group within the party, which drafted a six-year plan incorporating extended revolutionary reforms.

With his election to the presidency for a six-year term beginning in 1934, Cárdenas moved to the left in frank opposition to Calles’s wishes. When the inevitable test of power came, Cárdenas won, pushed Calles into temporary exile, and renamed and reorganized the party. He gave four important groups special representation: peasants; labour; the military; and the so-called “popular sector,” which included, among others, bureaucrats and teachers. The four sectors agreed to support the slate of candidates the party designated. The local, state, and national representatives made party policy and ratified the president’s choice of candidates.

With massive popular support and with the power elites under control, Cárdenas tirelessly pushed toward revolutionary goals. He and his advisers elaborated the land-reform programs; using land expropriated from private owners, they created communal cooperatives and gave them ejido status. By the end of his term, about 40 percent of the rural working force was under the ejido program. Cárdenas also nationalized railways and placed them under the management of labour.

Perhaps Cárdenas’s single most spectacular action was the expropriation of foreign petroleum companies following a labour dispute in which unions demanded not only wage increases but also participation in what management considered its exclusive role. A series of court cases and special boards found in favour of the workers. When the companies refused to accept the decisions, Cárdenas on March 18, 1938, decreed expropriation of their holdings, thus nationalizing the petroleum industry. Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), then a small agency, was designated to administer the industry for the country. The British government, whose nationals had a far larger stake than U.S. firms, immediately broke diplomatic relations. After a short delay U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt indicated that, if Mexico would make prompt and fair payments, he would not intervene diplomatically on behalf of the oil companies. This sympathetic reaction was based largely on the advice of the U.S. ambassador, Josephus Daniels, who as secretary of the navy had ordered the occupation of Veracruz in 1914 but who over the years had become a warm friend of the Mexican people.

Mexicans consider March 18, 1938, as the anniversary of Mexican economic independence. Cárdenas had not only restored an important resource to national patrimony but also showed that national honour and dignity could not be flouted by foreign entrepreneurs, however powerful. After engaging in propaganda campaigns, boycotts, blacklists, and other forms of economic warfare, the oil companies eventually were forced to settle their claims on essentially Mexican terms. Removing a pretext for intervention, the Mexican government made certain that the companies received all of their payments on time.

Once the initial bungling was over, Pemex developed the capacity to fuel the industrial revolution that marked Mexico’s next epoch. No one realized at the time how important petroleum would become on the world political and economic scene in the decades ahead.

General Manuel Ávila Camacho, whom Cárdenas supported, and General Juan Andreu Almazán fought a close and bitter contest for the presidency in 1940. When Almazán lost, he sought U.S. support for a revolution. But to emphasize the U.S. position toward Ávila Camacho and Mexico, Roosevelt sent Vice President Henry A. Wallace to attend the inauguration. When Cárdenas left the presidency in November 1940, a major chapter of the Mexican Revolution had closed.

Ávila Camacho’s domestic policy was conciliatory. While retaining earlier forms, he placated Roman Catholics by announcing, “I am a believer.” These words had political importance that transcended their immediate religious significance. They meant that the social programs of the Mexican Revolution would slow down after 1940. The overriding issues of the day, however, were diplomatic and economic; the Cárdenas resurgence had increased Mexico’s self-respect but had left its economy in a depressed state. The economy would be tested during World War II.

World War II, 1941–45

World War II brought profound changes to Mexico. Its basic economic structure was transformed, as to a lesser degree were its political, social, and cultural institutions. To offset wartime shortages, industrialization and urbanization were accelerated.

Even before Mexico entered the war, it supplied vital raw materials to the United States. Mexico and the United States in November 1941 signed a general agreement that resolved most of their outstanding quarrels. The old problem of U.S. agrarian claims was settled, a reciprocal-trade treaty was outlined, and the Mexican peso was stabilized and supported to maintain a constant dollar ratio. The United States agreed to continue silver purchases at world prices and to provide long-term loans to buttress Mexico’s economy. Separate agreements were reached on military aid, primarily to professionalize the Mexican army and its small air force. To that end, the military sector was dropped from the official party, eliminating the army as a separate bloc in politics.

Mexico became an active belligerent in World War II in 1942 after Germany sank two of its tankers. The Mexican foreign secretary, Ezequiel Padilla, took the lead in urging other Latin American countries to support the Allies as well. A Mexican–North American joint defense committee planned cooperative operations to be carried out in case the Japanese attacked Mexico’s west coast. Former president Lázaro Cárdenas served on the committee and became minister of defense when that post was created in 1944. A small Mexican air unit operated with the United States in the Philippines. But Mexico’s major contribution to the war effort was the steady supply of raw materials for U.S. industry. It also contributed hundreds of thousands of temporary farmworkers (braceros) and railroad men under the Bracero Treaty, which was negotiated by the United States in 1942 to alleviate labour shortages occasioned by the military draft. (By the time the program was finally terminated in the 1960s, millions of Mexicans had participated.)

If Mexico had only a minor impact on the outcome of the war, the war exerted a major impact on Mexico. With most of the free world producing war matériel, imports to Mexico became scarce or were unavailable. To fill this vacuum, Mexican light industry developed, almost exclusively with Mexican capital. As a result, the social revolution of the 1920s and ’30s was replaced by an industrial revolution in the postwar years.

Mexico since 1945

Prosperity and repression under the PRI

Mexico’s population exploded at the end of World War II. The industrialism spawned by the war became a major element in the economy. The military increasingly faded into the background as arbiters of national policy, and Mexico had an unbroken line of civilian presidents, beginning with the election of Miguel Alemán in 1946. With him the emphasis shifted from the Cárdenas approach—dividing Mexico’s small agricultural land area among many persons—to the development of new resources. Massive hydraulic projects were undertaken to furnish electric power, open new lands, provide flood control, and become the nuclei of regional agricultural-industrial complexes. The nationalized oil industry became a major producer of natural gas and petrochemicals in an effort to meet burgeoning domestic needs. Economic integration was accomplished by the extension of railroad, highway, and airline networks to nearly all regions.

Postwar Mexico was marked by a continuity of basic policies unprecedented in Mexican history and by the peaceful constitutional transfer of presidential power from one civilian regime to the next. President Alemán was the chief architect of new departures in the official party, including the change of its name from the Party of the Mexican Revolution to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional; PRI). Suffrage in Mexico doubled when President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines enfranchised women with a constitutional amendment in 1953, though they did not actually vote until 1958. Electoral reform laws broadened the political base, but opposition parties grew slowly as the PRI dominated the political power mechanisms of the state. As late as the 1980s, only the conservative National Action Party (Partido de Acción Popular; PAN) constituted any kind of a threat to the PRI. It was only a minor threat, however, with its strength limited to a few northern states. But by the 1990s PAN and the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Demócrata; PRD) had become significant political forces.

Mexico experienced unprecedented prosperity during the half century following World War II, despite some notable periods of economic strain. Mexico’s economic growth in the 1970s was financed with massive international loans. Government planners calculated easy repayment from projected oil revenues, including income from the huge reserves discovered in 1976 in Tabasco and Chiapas states. They were unable, however, to predict the world oil glut of the early 1980s and the sharp fall in oil prices. The Mexican government struggled increasingly to pay even the interest on its huge foreign debt.

Other problems included high unemployment and underemployment, an unfavourable balance of trade, and an alarming inflation rate. Wealthy Mexicans reinvested their assets abroad because they lacked confidence in the economy. The Mexican peso declined rapidly in foreign-exchange markets. President José López Portillo, elected in 1976, nationalized the country’s banks and imposed strict foreign-currency controls to achieve some economic stability. Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, who was elected to succeed López in 1982, established a program of economic austerity that gradually restored international confidence in the Mexican economy.

The country also endured its share of political violence. Mexico, like many other Latin American countries, was considered a U.S. ally in the Cold War. However, Mexican society embraced a wide political spectrum with a range of outspoken activists, including members of leftist political parties who believed the government had abandoned the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. At the other end of the political spectrum were reactionary forces in the military who viewed such dissension as a serious threat to national security. Within this tense climate, the country experienced numerous public protests, police crackdowns, and escalating violence—including the shooting of demonstrators just days before the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City—along with allegations of antigovernment plots and terrorism. The climate of fear degenerated into a “dirty war” from the 1960s through the 1980s, during which right-wing government forces were responsible for the “disappearance” of hundreds of peasant organizers, student activists, and other dissidents. Many were taken into custody merely on the suspicion of subversion and suffered human rights abuses including torture, imprisonment without trial, and extrajudicial execution. However, the fates of many were unknown until the 21st century, when the administration of President Vicente Fox released formerly secret government documents from the period.

In September 1985 an earthquake killed thousands of people in Mexico City, and many blamed the federal government for the slow pace of reconstruction. Economic liberalization, narcotics traffic, and the flow of immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border were also major concerns. In the 1988 presidential election, which was allegedly marred by widespread fraud, de la Madrid was succeeded in 1988 by PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Salinas’s policies signaled a great departure from the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. He favoured neoliberal (free market-driven) trade policies, criticized labour unions and the ejido system of agriculture, and set aside much of the anticlericalism that had typified the revolution. In 1992 Salinas signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada. When it went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, it had already fostered a wave of neoliberal trade and the opening of additional maquiladoras (export-oriented manufacturing plants). But there was a price to pay for declaring the Mexican Revolution dead. That same day, a long-simmering rebellion erupted when the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional; EZLN), commonly called the Zapatistas, seized several towns in Chiapas state and demanded social justice for Mexico’s impoverished indigenous peoples. More than 145 people died in the initial fighting. Over the following years, the Zapatistas found sympathy among large segments of the Mexican populace even as the government attempted to extinguish the rebellion with a mixture of military offensives and negotiations.

After decades of one-party rule and numerous accusations of rigged election results, opposition parties made increasing calls for free and fair elections. In 1994, significant electoral reforms were finally enacted; however, that year was also marked by the assassination of the PRI presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, and of the PRI secretary-general, José Francisco Ruíz Massieu. (The brother of former president Salinas was imprisoned from 1995 to 2005 while being investigated for the latter’s murder.) Colosio’s campaign manager, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, was designated the new PRI candidate and went on to win the election.

Beyond single-party rule

Zedillo struggled with economic and social issues. In late 1994 and 1995 Mexico reeled from the “tequila crisis,” which resulted from a rapid devaluation of the peso. The government instituted an economic austerity program—which was particularly detrimental for the poor—to secure billions of dollars in emergency loans from the United States and the International Monetary Fund, and the economy slowly began to improve. Zedillo continued to promote the neoliberal policies of his predecessor; however, the Mexican Congress resisted calls for the sale of Pemex. Zedillo broke with tradition by appointing a non-PRI cabinet member, by cooperating with opposition parties to enact electoral reforms, and by refusing to select his successor—insisting instead that the party choose its next presidential candidate. Many of Zedillos’s reforms effectively loosened the PRI’s grip on power, and in 1997 opposition parties won several seats in municipal, state, and national elections—including control of the Chamber of Deputies—while the leftist politician Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano became Mexico City’s first elected mayor. In addition, the government’s popularity declined after anti-Zapatista paramilitary groups massacred dozens of peasants in Chiapas.

In 2000 the PAN candidate Vicente Fox Quesada was elected president. Fox’s term (2000–06) marked the end of 71 years of PRI presidential rule, although his leadership suffered from divisions within PAN and from the party’s failure to win a congressional majority in 2000 and in the 2003 midterm elections. Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive and state governor, continued to promote neoliberal economics while promising to fight corruption and drug trafficking. He also called for a human rights commission to report on abuses committed by the PRI government during Mexico’s “dirty war” of the 1960s to ’80s. Fox’s efforts regarding the rebellion in Chiapas met with mixed results, although he named an indigenous rights coordinator and allowed a caravan of Zapatista delegates to meet with him in Mexico City. However, the Zapatistas charged that Fox failed to address the deepest inequalities and abuses—many of which, they believed, were linked with free-trade policies and were root causes of the rebellion.

In the controversial 2006 presidential election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the popular PRD governor of the Federal District, squared off as the candidate of a leftist coalition against the conservative PAN candidate, Felipe Calderón. Both López Obrador and Calderón initially claimed victory in the closely contested race, which was marred by evidence of irregularities and allegations of fraud. Massive protests (including the sustained occupation of central Mexico City) resulted from the declaration of Calderón as the winner; even after the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judicial Branch confirmed Calderón’s election, López Obrador announced the formation of a parallel government, with himself as the “legitimate” president. Nonetheless, Calderón was inaugurated in December and took power. Moreover, in the 2006 election, PAN garnered the greatest number of seats in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, although it did not win an outright majority.

As the 21st century unfolded, Mexico continued to struggle with socioeconomic inequalities and corruption as well as changes in world trade, including the consequences of NAFTA and fears that manufacturing jobs were being lost to China and other Asian countries. Although Pemex (and government coffers) benefited from soaring oil prices associated with U.S. consumption and wars in the Middle East, the future of the Mexican economy remained uncertain. Most observers agreed, however, that immigration and cross-border trade would continue to dominate U.S.-Mexico relations.

Presidents of Mexico from 1917

The table provides a chronological list of the presidents of Mexico from 1917.